American deaths in Iraq reach 2,500 mark

  thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog

I guess nothing more really needs to be said other than how long it will take to double that if we continue to stay.

Zarqawi...
by Riverbend

How do I feel? To hell with Zarqawi (or Zayrkawi as Bush calls him). He was an American creation- he came along with them- they don't need him anymore, apparently. His influence was greatly exaggerated but he was the justification for every single family they killed through military strikes and troops. It was WMD at first, then it was Saddam, then it was Zarqawi. Who will it be now? Who will be the new excuse for killing and detaining Iraqis? Or is it that an excuse is no longer needed- they have freedom to do what they want. The slaughter in Haditha months ago proved that. "They don't need him anymore," our elderly neighbor waved the news away like he was shooing flies, "They have fifty Zarqawis in government."

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Entertainment News Tonight

The Pentagon Channel today announced the cancellation of its long-running reality TV series, The Abu Zarqawi Hour, saying tonight's special-effects extravaganza, in which Keifer Sutherland and a team of secret agents trail the terrorist mastermind to his hideout and call in a massive airstrike, would be the show's last.

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Zarqawi's End is Not a Famous Victory
Death of a Jailbird
by Robert Fisk

So, it's another "mission accomplished". The man immortalised by the Americans as the most dangerous terrorist since the last most dangerous terrorist, is killed--by the Americans. A Jordanian corner-boy who could not even lock and load a machine gun is blown up by the US Air Force--and Messrs Bush and Blair see fit to boast of his demise. To this have our leaders descended. And how short are our memories.

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The incredible shrinking U.S.
Despite the death of Zarqawi, Bush's huge gamble in Iraq has failed. As a result, the U.S. is weaker everywhere in the world -- and that's not all bad.
By Helena Cobban

Unfortunately for the dice-rollers, they miscalculated their chances of success. They were right about two things, though: the size of the stakes in Iraq and the strategic linkage they had asserted between the situation there and those other theaters around the world. So while it is perhaps possible that if they had "won" inside Iraq, that might indeed have strengthened their position in the other theaters, that proposition will never be tested. For instead of winning in Iraq, the Bushites are now -- as I and others had predicted all along -- losing there, very fast. Accordingly, in terms of Washington's relations with powers as disparate as the mullahs' Iran, Putin's Russia, the rising powers of China and India, or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, we now see unfolding exactly the kind of erosion of U.S. power that the neocons once warned against.

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Good God, What Have We Done to our Marines?

"Haditha was shockingly different - a feral place where the marines hardly washed; a number had abandoned the official living quarters to set up separate encampments with signs ordering outsiders to keep out; and a daily routine punctured by the emergency alarm of the dam itself with its antiquated and crumbling machinery."

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I Was Stationed in Haditha

When I first got there in March of 2004, I lived on the seventh floor of ten. The first thing that would hit me when I arrived was the horrible smell. Something was leaking sulfur gas, and it smelled like rotten eggs. People with more knowledge about the subject than me said it was good that we could smell it. That meant the parts per million was so small that it wouldn't kill us. When the gas reached lethal levels, our olfactory senses would shut down long before the gas actually suffocated us. It made me glad they still forced us to carry our gas masks around.

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US confronts brutal culture among its finest sons
In the wake of the Haditha massacre come further allegations of outlaw killings in Iraq. They add to growing unease about US military culture that fails to distinguish civilian from insurgent

American veterans of the war in Iraq have described a culture of casual violence, revenge and prejudice against Iraqi civilians that has made the killing of innocent bystanders a common occurrence.

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Marine's wife paints portrait of US troops out of control in Haditha
· Unit accused of abusing drugs and alcohol
· Officers relieved of duty after killing of 24 Iraqis

The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a "total breakdown" in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion's staff sergeants.

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When AWOL Is the Only Way Out
As explained in a new book, Mission Rejected, the sight of U.S. troops kicking the heads of decapitated Iraqis around 'like a soccer ball' made Army soldier Joshua Key desert to Canada.

Why read Clausewitz when Shock and Awe can make a clean sweep of things?

The events of 11 September 2001 killed thousands, left many thousands more bereft, and horrified countless millions who merely bore witness. But for a few, 9/11 suggested an opportunity. In the inner circles of the United States government men of ambition seized on that opportunity with alacrity. Far from fearing a ‘global war on terror’, they welcomed it, certain of their ability to bend war to their purposes. Although the ensuing conflict has not by any means run its course, we are now in a position to begin evaluating the results of their handiwork.

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Field commanders tell Pentagon Iraq war 'is lost'

Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war "is lost" and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month.

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Other People's Blood

For the smug, comfortable, well-off Americans, it doesn't seem to matter how long the war in Iraq goes on - as long as the agony is endured by others. If the network coverage gets too grim, viewers can always switch to the E! channel (one hand on the remote, the other burrowing into a bag of chips) to follow the hilarious antics of Paris, Britney, Brangelina et al.

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US 'planning to keep 50,000 troops in Iraq for many years'

America plans to retain a garrison of 50,000 troops, one tenth of its entire army, in Iraq for years to come, according to US media reports.

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Nightmare Scenario

Is the badly outnumbered American expeditionary force in Iraq in trouble? Is it in danger of being trapped? With all our firepower, are we looking at the possibility of some kind of a military defeat?

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Baghdad Bush

We can only guess whether Shrub's secret repeat visit to Iraq was dreamed up before the Abu Zarqawi Hour went off the air, as the White House claims, or whether the trip was actually thrown together on the fly in an effort to milk a little more free publicity from the final episode. Either way, the stunt revealed as much about the depleted state of the Cheney administration's bag of propaganda tricks as it did about the gang's determination to keep pouring blood and treasure into the world's largest hole in the desert.

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Life in Baghdad

15(SBU) More recently, we have begun shredding documents which show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisionms would we make for them if we evacuate.

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